I don't know what you might have been trying to sell them for, but I would put a big discount on them first and if they are still not selling, give them away with the purchase of your new CD.

Unless as P Town mentioned, it is so bad that you feel it would repel potential fans from supporting your current music, I would want my music to at least have the chance at reaching a wider audience before disposing of the inventory completely.

It sucks to have that many CD's left over, and I feel for you; especially if you're less than pleased with the final product.

I hope it was a lesson learned to not order 500 of any piece merchandise unless you know you can move it. I know a band I played in for a while had boxes and boxes of T-Shirts and CD's because when you bought that many you "got a good deal". I asked how many shirts and cd's did they have to sell to cover their costs vs. how many they sold. I think after 2 years, they were still 500 or 600 away from just covering costs.

You might make less per shirt/CD when you have smaller bundles, but at least then you can turn over your inventory sooner. Best problem in the world is to have to order more because you've "sold out".

I once read a column from an editor of a magazine that for some reason could not get picked up by his corner bookstore - the content was perfect for the demographic but the store's buyers just weren't buying it for sale.

So every month, he'd go in and 'reverse shoplift' a few copies. He left it for some management beancounter type to figure out at the end of the year how they managed to sell dozens of copies of a magazine they didn't even stock...

Now - any UPC scancode you put on is not going to match their database so you'd have to be a little clever there, and of course you wouldn't get any money from the deal - but you might get a few new followers...

We have sold maybe 20-30 copies, and now we have tons of them sitting around taking up space.

We have a new cd now which we like a lot more.

I'm thinking I'll probably save 30 copies of the old cd just in case we need them- but what should I do with the other 400 or so? I guess just put them into the dumpster/recycling as applicable?

Thanks!

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Give them away at gigs, but don't throw them out!

Maybe give a copy of the old one with a new one... Make it into a "special offer"...
So many things you can do that are better than throwing them away.

My band made a run of 1000 in April 2013, we've sold quite a few at gigs, but for us is more important to get them out, so that more people hear about us, than making money. So we have sometimes done special gigs where we sold them cheaper (just above cost) and sold many that way.
At our album launch party we factored the CD cost into the ticket and announced it as "every ticket gets a free copy of our CD", and that way we got about 300 CDs out in one day.
Some people see CDs as revenue, and that's cool. But if you don't sell them, they serve no purpose.
Not saying that's what you have done, just saying that you are sitting on 400 audio flyers at least.
Use them as promo.

My old band had the same issue. 500 made, sold half. Good songs, great sound quality and production, very questionable vocals (great live but no energy or umpf on the album). I hung onto them for about 7 or 8 years and just got sick of looking at them. Tossed. Lesson learned.

CDs are very recyclable. I work for a small CD duplication shop and we recycle CDs, DVDs and BluRays all the time. We even offer to recycle them for anybody that has excess. We're in AZ so I doubt you'd wanna send them here, but find a local source.